Quantitative elemental analysis:
The instrument used for AFS consists of atom reservoir that might be a flame or a furnace etc., a basic source emitting the features absorption radiation of the element being determined, a monochromator, detector, signal processor and readout device. The basic source is commonly a hollow cathode lamp or a tuned laser.
Atomic fluorescence spectrometry is meaningful in study of electronic structure of atoms and in quantitative elemental analysis. Applications involves determination of Pb, Hg, Cd, As (III), As (V) Sb(III), Sb(V), Se(IV,VI), etc within clinical, environmental, geological and metallurgical, pharmaceutical and petrochemical samples. The major benefits of fluorescence measurements as compared to absorption measurements are the greater sensitivity as the signal has extremely low background and lesser interferences. It does suffer from the interference from matrix emission, oxide creation and scattering because of organic solvents but not as severely as the other atomic spectrometric methods.